


Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Disability, Gender Non-Conforming Character, Little Mermaid Elements, M/M, MerMay, Merfolk AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-01 13:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18801499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: It is both a 20s and a merfolk AU. If you can stick with me through that, it is a story about disability, and about passion and love-- not only romantic, not only for other people, but about those things that we find passion in, and where we find purpose, and how we support each other. It's about being different and the same. It is about a merman who just wants to read books, and a man who doesn't know what he wants. It is about deciding who your family is. It is about mercy, and about longing, and about BElonging, and about kindness. It is about connection.It is about what it is to be human.





	1. Remember Me To One Who Lives There

    The boy looks Aziraphale’s own age, when he sees him. One of the ship-creatures, one of the shore-creatures. They cannot breathe the water, but even if they could, this boy would die in the safe depths. There’s nothing to protect him-- not his soft skin, nor his frail body. He hasn’t scales to gird what’s vulnerable, hasn’t healthy deposits of fat to keep his heart and his guts from succumbing to the chill of the sea. And how would he even move?

 

    The law is to let them drown. You mustn’t interfere with them, he’s been told that time and time again. If you were to save one, one who had seen you, then others might come for war.

 

    Aziraphale was lectured harshly only last year, when the woman had been swept off the bow of a great ship he’d seen many times. She was gravid, he had felt an overwhelming sadness at the thought she would die, and her child. He took mercy. One of the men had dove overboard after her, and Aziraphale had…

 

    They had seen him, but only for a moment. He’d told them they mustn’t speak a word about it, though, and the man had nodded, before the ropes were thrown over and Aziraphale had to hurry out of sight. And he must have been right to do it, for no war came to them.

 

    They had punished him as a child then, but not this year, were he caught.

 

    The boat the boy had fallen from is not a great and beautiful ship like the one before. It is small and splintered, a storm had driven it into the rocks. Aziraphale gets the boy up onto a piece of his ruined boat, and he pushes him the long way to shore as the storm recedes. Pushes his little float onto the sand.

 

    The boy looks at him then, as the clouds open overhead, as he regains consciousness. His eyes are strange and beautiful, different from the eyes of the man who had leapt overboard for the woman he saved last year. What variety they must have, he supposes. They widen at the sight of Aziraphale, and he coughs and tries to push himself up, and is too weak, too dizzy, to do so.

 

    “Please--” Aziraphale frets. “I won’t-- Don’t be afraid! You’ll be safe. But you mustn’t go back to where I found you.”

 

    The boy nods, pushing the dark, wet hair from his face with a shaky hand. He collapses back, but he breathes. And up on the cliffs there is a house, and Aziraphale can hear the distant shouts of men. He disappears quickly.

 

    He returns to the wreck to scavenge. The tools of the ship-creatures and the materials that can be saved are of poor quality, often. Many things rot quickly or have no stability, no practical use. But sometimes there are good things. Things which will last a while before they corrode. Aziraphale has his own little collection of useless but pretty bits, he’s been a scavenger since he came of age to work-- he was not fit to hunt and not fit to fight, and even if he were good with the little ones, he would need to be able to protect them. Too soft, they call him. Well, he doesn’t mind. Scavenging is a good job, he finds it soothing. He likes collecting objects with no use simply because they appeal to him. In his little private cavern, he has a row of pretty little boxes. They’re too small to put much in, but he puts things in them anyway. A pearl here, a tiny nub of broken coral there, a small shell, a smaller stone, a strange circle of metal.

 

    The treasures he keeps from the ships are his own, but the pearl, the shell… the proper lovely things, he holds onto in case he should ever be in the position to court. He likes the idea of it, courting. He sees his peers giving tokens, bringing back the choicest meats from the hunt or the sweetest delicacies from foraging, dancing together. The press of forehead to forehead and the twining of tails, and the hands clasped carefully.

 

    Well, really he likes the idea of being courted. He likes the idea of being brought pretty things to keep in his little trove, and being fed, and being led in a dance. Being wanted.

 

    It’s a silly dream to have. Perhaps if they come in contact with a wandering pod again-- there might be youths who share his quirks. Who feel soft and hopeful rather than fearful, when they watch and listen to those ship-creatures, shore-creatures. They speak the same language, they can communicate. And yet they don’t.

   

    He likes the sound of music and he likes the look of the things they wear, which must offer protection out of the water somehow. Or perhaps they wear those things to decorate themselves, not being blessed with colorful scales and fins with which to attract a mate. He likes the snatches of stories he hears told, and poetry. He likes the carved figures which decorate their ships, and the strange little treasures. Small weapons and tools and toys.

 

    This small ship held a fair amount for its size, and he checks the bounty, hiding some things in the spaces between the rocks to take back, going through the trunks and discarding what is useless, packing up what is useful. Wrecks often have food, this is no exception. Aziraphale has no one to present the best things to, but he also has no one who presents the best to him, and so he feels he is justified in taking one thing first for himself.

 

    He knows it is food, though not what kind, all the food had been together. Fish had gathered to eat at the little things which crumble into nothingness in the water, and he lets them be, and packs away the tins with pictures on them-- some contain fish, which have a strong flavor and secrete some kind of oil, though they look like ordinary small fish. Some contain other things. There are also clear jars which hold strange foods.

 

    This, though, this thing Aziraphale first wants for himself… Curious, he lets his teeth pierce the surface. It gives way with a pleasant sound, and sweetness floods his mouth. Down at the center, there’s some which can’t be eaten, or at least can’t be enjoyed, but the rest… from its beautiful color to its odd crunch to its flavor, he promises himself he will always claim one if he can.

 

    It’s once almost everything is packed away that he finds The Treasure, the one that would someday change the course of his life. He grabs the strap of the trunk full of useful things to take back to his pod, but first, he takes The Treasure to his own little place.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Anthony Crowley is not having his best day. Either that, or he’s having the best day anyone ever had.

 

    He’d been so confident he could sail on his own, but when the storm swept him out to the rocks… And he had thought he would die, and he hadn’t known what he even felt about it. Sad, but not any more sad than sometimes.

 

    But he’d come to on the shore. He’d been lying there half on a splintered piece of _The Viper’s_ hull, and he’d opened his eyes, and he’d seen…

 

    He’d seen the angel.

 

    The clouds had broken and the light had poured down and the angel had been soaking wet, its pale curls plastered to its head, but it couldn’t really have been anything else, because it _glittered_ in a multitude of colors in the sun, and he couldn’t properly make out the wings but there had been a glimpse of them, he thought. And it might have worn a golden breastplate, or it might have… Well, there was gold somewhere, and a lot of gleaming, and he’d cursed his rotten eyesight, because he could barely make a thing out, but he could see its face well enough, and everything else was distorted by light.

 

    He’d lost his glasses, but there’s another pair up at the house. He sits on the dock where _The Viper_ used to rest between jaunts, his poor lovely boat, and he waits for them to come and collect him.

 

    They make such a fuss, they half-carry him up the stairs and wrap him in blankets and his parents pretend as if they aren’t embarrassed by him all the rest of the time, as if they didn’t hide him out at the house over the sea instead of taking him to live in town because his eyes make strangers nervous.

 

    And non-strangers.

 

    And because he is strange.

 

    They go into town-- not the village, but the proper city-- sometimes, and they leave him in the care of his tutors and his childhood nanny and most of the house staff, and only take their personal servants with them, and he doesn’t mind when they do. It’s his nanny and his tutors and the cook and the gardener and the head butler who’ve all really done the work of raising him.

 

    He was born with blue eyes, his mother has told him. All babies are, Nanny tells him. They’d been blue, but there had been something wrong with them. The shape of them was wrong. It was only worse when the color changed. And worse still the older he got, he thinks. He remembers being a sad child, he doesn’t know if there was a time before when he was not.

 

    Maybe it happened when he was still an infant, and his eyes turned yellow. Maybe he was born to be sad and quiet and lonely even in a crowded room, a changeling child.

 

    But whatever awful pains of living he suffers and however much they hide him away and avoid dealing with him, an angel saved his life. Told him not to be afraid and everything. He doesn’t tell anyone about it, he isn’t stupid, but he can’t imagine it was anything else, because a person wouldn’t have disappeared that way, like he melted right back into the waves in a beam of glittering light.

 

    If an angel saved his life, then he thinks his life has some purpose. No matter how bleak it gets, he’s important somehow, he knows it now. He’s important. He has to live until he makes good on whatever promise was seen in him, whatever divine… business he’s meant for.

 

    Once he’s warm and dry and has his backup pair of dark glasses on, he gets his sketchbook. He begins drawing the angel, as best he can remember it. Him. He draws the angel over and over again until he’s sure he’s captured it as well as anyone could.

 

\---/-/---

 

    The Treasure had contained a message, or many messages, that’s what Aziraphale had thought at first. He could make out that there was a pattern to it, but after long hours of study, he came upon his epiphany. It was the rhythm of the thing-- not just a pattern of little shapes, but a pattern of long stretches and short stretches. Not messages, but a story.

 

    The pod never did such things, it would hardly be economic. Messages had to be etched in stone. Their pictographs were simple and sparingly used. Stories, like songs, had to be passed down orally.

 

    Something in him craves this. He wants to learn to understand it-- and others like it, which he finds over the years, when he scavenges not only wrecks but simple cases of lost cargo. The Treasure is not made for life under the waves, they never are. Just being in the water damages them slowly, not nearly as slowly as many things are damaged.

 

    It isn’t always stories, he doesn’t think, though it mostly is. There are messages bound together, too, simple repeated phrases he can’t parse arranged in columns. He can’t know what the tiny shapes mean, but he longs to as he’s never wanted anything. He forgets youthful dreams of distinguishing himself to his pod by finding some great useful treasure trove, he forgets even sillier youthful dreams of a mate courting and treasuring him. The years tick by and he thinks of one thing and one thing only, what it would be to have this thing for himself, to know and understand his favorite found things.

 

\---/-/---

 

    The Crowleys leave their son the run of the house over the sea by the time he’s eighteen. By the time he’s twenty, he has a reputation, and his house is worth traveling to from town if a party is being thrown.

 

    He tries to tell himself he likes them, parties. He likes the idea of parties. He likes people! He likes the sorts of people who come to _his_ parties, where ladies in tuxedos kiss pretty girls, and boys in rouge dance cheek to cheek with handsome men, and where people who are both or neither do whatever the hell they please.

 

    There is song and dance, there is food and champagne.

 

    Anthony Crowley listens from the garden, to the party people he entertains when the mood strikes him. When he gets too lonely and the company of the staff isn’t what he needs-- though, they do their best to accommodate him in his odd whims, he knows.

 

    He wishes he liked parties, he likes people a great deal. It is just difficult to be around them.

 

    He doesn’t know what his purpose in life is, still, but he doesn’t doubt he has one. There are things which make life livable.

 

    He does still love art, though he creates less and less. He loves to own it and to look at it, to show his guests this or that and ask what they think of it, of the use of light and color, of the subjects, of the meanings. He loves the garden, and has learned to tend it himself. Learned at the knee of a patient old gardener who he now chiefly employs to chide the groundskeeper and take naps and play bridge… And he has his car, got it recently, on his twentieth birthday. Already loves to take her out fast along empty roads, and to lovingly buff away any spatters. He’d heeded the advice-- the orders?-- he’d received when he was a callow youth who believed he might never die, and he’d never replaced _The Viper_ with another boat, but he thinks he loves the Bentley even more dearly.

 

    He has things he likes doing, but none of them is a calling. Sometimes he takes the clattering wooden stairway down the cliff, and goes out to the end of the long-empty dock, and he looks out to the horizon and awaits inspiration from above. He never gets it.

 

\---/-/---

 

    They told him he would trade his beauty for pain, and Aziraphale accepted that bargain. They told him he would give up his voice, and he accepted that too-- the voices of the merfolk could be dangerous to men, even far from a siren’s sharp rocks. He’d accepted it all because it had been years, years of wanting so badly to learn and understand…

 

    And not only that… he doesn’t belong with his pod. He isn’t like them. When he was young, he might have dreamed of a handsome nomad whisking him away, but that isn’t what he wants now. He wants to discover something new to him, wants to live amongst these wondrous _things_ full of stories that his eyes might take in. Once he goes ashore, he can find out how he might learn. How to decipher their sweet secrets.

 

    They take him to the surface quickly once the ritual is complete, but he can barely swim. His tail is split and his fins are gone, his scales, too. But this is the bargain. He is ungainly in the water but he has seen the way they do it, and he can.

 

    The sand hurts him. It never used to-- but then, he had scales… the bottoms of his feet are soft and every step the pain lances through him. He misses the protection, and… in the small, secret part of his heart where his vanity lies, he misses how beautiful he was. Not enough to attract suitors, when he has always still been very much himself, but… but beautiful! He’d been a mosaic of pinks and golds and blues and greens, he’d flashed in the sunlight, he’d had delicate fins, and the diamond patch of scales that protected his heart had been, he knew, attractively sized and shaped.

 

    At least he still has his soft shape, the swell of his belly, and the legs that were once his tail are beautifully thick up near his torso, they still taper well. He just hasn’t got any nice frills to show off. Well, they wouldn’t be any help with moving on land, but they would look nice. His legs look nice for legs, he supposes, but they _hurt_ , and he feels so heavy out of the water… he can barely keep upright trying to walk along the shifting sands.

 

    Also, his genitals are just… _out_. It seems highly inconvenient.

 

    He staggers along the beach, around a corner to the secluded cove he knows-- he knows this place! The long wooden structure and the place where he once brought a drowning boy, and the stairs up to the big house on the cliff! And there…

 

    There sitting out at the end of the wooden thing, dangling his feet in the water, is it him? The skinny thing with the dark hair. Dark, but the sun picks up glorious color hiding in it. Aziraphale tries to call out, only to remember he has no voice. He waves instead, moving as quickly as he can, and when the young man catches sight of him, he leaps to his feet and rushes over.

 

    It is him, his dark eyeglasses slip down his nose as he catches Aziraphale, catches him before he can fall, and he has those familiar golden eyes.

 

    “Where did you come from?” He asks, and Aziraphale points out to sea before he can stop himself. The young man scans the horizon, and then turns back to him. “Okay, all right… come on, then, you-- let’s-- let’s get you taken care of. You certainly can’t-- Yeah.”

 

\---/-/---

 

    He can do this.

 

    He can do this.

 

    He has no idea WHAT he’s going to do, but he _can_. This is it, this is what he’s _for_. His life was saved so that he could save someone else, that makes _sense_.

 

    Maybe to help others in general, he doesn’t know, but a naked man showing up on his private stretch of beach feels like something of a sign as to what he needs to do right _now_. The man is mute and shaky, doesn’t seem able to walk very well, no telling how far he might have had to swim. Had he been in a wreck, or had he escaped from something out at sea?

 

    He leads him to sit down on the dock, and it seems a relief for him to be off his feet, but Anthony can’t get him up the stairs alone.

 

    “I’ll be back with help, okay?” He promises. “Will you wait right here for me? Right here where it’s safe?”

 

    The man nods, and Anthony lets out a sigh of relief. “Good. I’ll be back soon with a friend. We’re going to take you up to that house there. Don’t worry about anything, all right? You’ll be safe.”

 

    The man nods again, and smiles at him with such an open trust. He can’t stop and think about that, or about what he’s been through, or how he got here. No, physical needs first, then when the stranger is safe, clean, fed, rested… then he can help him with the rest.

 

    He comes back with a blanket to wrap around the poor man, and the groundskeeper to help carry him up the stairs. The stranger finds walking painful, that much is obvious, and they can only support so much of his weight on the stairs, though they do well enough. As soon as they get him in the house and onto a chair, Anthony kneels down and looks at his feet, but they don’t seem injured.

 

    There’s a glass of water waiting, and he helps the stranger to drink a little, smiling cautiously.

 

    “There you go… more in a bit. And some food. But a hot bath first, and we’re looking for something you can wear to keep warm.”

 

    There’s very little comprehension-- oh, food, he understands, though he doesn’t seem to catch any of the rest.

 

    “Are you hungry?” He asks. He can’t have been starving long-term, he looks healthy overall, even if starving didn’t take all his weight off, there’d be a sick cast to him, perhaps a bit of gauntness to the face even as he retained his shape… but he could have gone a day or two without and still look in fair shape. And the man nods, which is all the answer they need, isn’t it? “Don’t worry, supper is being prepared for you. You’re safe here, you’ll be my guest.”

 

    The man smiles at that, cautious but warm, and he nods firmly.

 

    “Yes, that’s it. For as long as you need to. You can leave when you’re ready, but you can stay as you wish. I-- I’m happy to have a guest, all right? Here, come and lean on me, you’ll feel better after a bath.

 

    He seems happy to see the tub, though he hisses at the heat, a voiceless sound as he touches the surface and pulls away several times.

 

    “It’ll cool a bit, and you’ll get used to it. But you must be freezing. It’s all right.” Anthony tests it himself. It’s what he likes, but then, suppose he likes his baths over-hot?

 

    They wait together a while until the stranger is ready, and Anthony knocks off some sand with a corner of the blanket before helping him in.

 

    There’s soap and a flannel set out, but he seems very content just to soak.

 

    “I’ll give you your privacy, and be back with some clothes soon. Then we can eat.” He promises. “I’ll be just outside, so ring this bell if you need help, all right? And I’ll come running if you do.”

 

    He gives it a little ring to illustrate, and leaves it in arms’ reach. The stranger looks delighted by it, touches it with a careful fingertip before withdrawing, getting as much of himself under the water as possible.

 

    He doesn’t seem at all embarrassed about his nudity, but then, whatever might be behind him, suppose it’s such that a bit of public nudity hardly matters?

 

    The poor thing...


	2. Without No Seams Nor Needlework

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale settles into the house that overlooks the sea...

    The house is beautiful. As if every wonderful thing Aziraphale had ever found in a shipwreck was whole and in its place, and decorated with color… with lovely shapes and details. The _bath_ is intensely hot, but it feels good to be supported by the water again. His new legs seem to ache less in the hot water. The floors are covered with soft things, but even on those, his feet had hurt terribly.

 

    The man, who had been the boy… he’s beautiful, too, despite his unfortunately frail-looking figure. Stronger than he’d looked. Very few of the humans he’s seen have been what he’d have considered to be properly padded, but the air is warm enough, and the water in this home is so warm, they don’t seem to need it. He’s beautiful, in that he has a kind smile, and lovely eyes, and dark hair which catches the light just so. He invites a certain amount of pity, but he is… good-hearted. Perhaps he recognizes him and feels he owes him for his old rescue-- Aziraphale’s face is much the same as it was in his youth, if you didn’t focus on the tail he thinks he would be recognizable.

 

    The man returns, eventually, carrying a bundle of fabric in his arms.

 

    “How are you doing?” He asks, anxious expression relaxing a bit when Aziraphale gives him a smile and a nod. “Good. How’s your water? Oh-- that’s _freezing_ , come on, here, let me help you out.”

 

    Aziraphale wouldn’t have complained, the water feels fine to him. Still, he doesn’t fight the man on it. He helps Aziraphale out of the bath and onto a soft low seat, and he gives him a big soft piece of fabric. When Aziraphale merely stares down at it, the man takes it from him and starts gently wiping away the water from his skin, patting at his hair.

 

    “You poor thing… you’ll be all right. Whatever happened to you…” He sighs. “Here, I’m sorry it’s not much, but I promise we’ll get you some proper clothes soon as we can. Er-- sorry, I-- My name’s Anthony Crowley. We haven’t been introduced.”

 

    He laughs at that, and Aziraphale smiles brightly for half a moment, before realizing he has no way of giving his own name.

 

    “That’s all right. We’ll just save that for later.” Anthony says, following his train of thought. “You can ca-- You can just think of me as Anthony, all right? No need for formality, is there?”

 

    He helps Aziraphale into _clothing_ then. A loose, white garment, not quite a shirt and not quite a gown, tight around the middle but not uncomfortably so, with billowy sleeves. A pair of soft slippers which are a bit large for Aziraphale’s feet, but… they are a bit more bearable for walking in, than his bare feet on bare floors. He still feels unsteady, still appreciates having Anthony’s arm to walk on.

 

    He likes the sleeves… they make him feel less incomplete. He’d had lovely frills of fin along his forearms before. His newly-changed body had been so comparatively unadorned, but this garment, even plain as it is, adds a little something.

 

    Anthony brings him to a place to sit, with a great flat… thing. Small things like it, he’d seen before, after shipwrecks, but not so large nor so shining. Normally they were rough and rather ugly next to a thing like this. Anthony sits close to him, and one of the others comes and sets something before them, something which smells _wonderful_. Aziraphale is hesitant, and so it seems is Anthony. He reaches out tentatively, and then gently cups the back of Aziraphale’s head in one hand. He picks up the shiny little tool-- Aziraphale had found many like it in wrecks and spills, and never been sure of the original purpose. What Anthony uses it for is to bring little bits of the hot, aromatic liquid to Aziraphale’s mouth.

 

    “There… you’re all right, you’re safe.” He murmurs gently, stroking at Aziraphale’s hair. “Hm. Well-- deal with that in a bit, for now… you just eat, everything else we’ll take care of in time.”

 

    _Oh_. Anthony… wants to _feed_ him. And he’d accepted without thinking, because it had smelled good, because he had been hungry, and he’s never had liquid food before! It’s wonderful, unctuous and soothing, with a taste unlike any of the foods he knows. Not a whole other world from eating a good-sized fish, but… very different, still.

 

    Well… what does it hurt, if he allows Anthony to court him? It’s only feeding, he hasn’t accepted any tokens of serious intent. The shirt-gown seems to be less a serious gift, and more because it is customary for the shore-creatures to keep themselves covered at all times.

 

    He pulls away again, with a nervous apology, his face going all pink as he turns away from Aziraphale. Aziraphale picks up the tool, and sets it down again-- his hands used to be webbed, to midway along the finger, it feels strange to not have it, makes him anxious of manipulating small objects.

 

    He picks up the dish instead, sipping from it as he had sipped at the water before, and Anthony flashes him another anxious smile.

 

    “Do you like it?” He asks.

 

    Aziraphale nods eagerly. He can’t even hum properly, to express his approval, but the nod is enough, and the way he quickly returns to drinking his meal.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Whatever has happened to his poor house guest has left him in such a state. He is certainly very agreeable, but… to just sit there in the cool bath when he’d seemed to understand he could call for assistance, to sit there and not even think to dry himself when given a towel. Feeding him might have been too much…

 

    No, feeding him had definitely been too much. Anthony is sure that even if he’d felt uncoordinated and shaky, he’d have lifted the bowl to sip from if left to his own devices, as he did after those first couple of bites, but… he had felt compelled to, to do that to care for him, when he’d seemed so helpless and so…

 

    So trusting after his ordeal, so gentle and sweet in accepting his rescue.

 

    And so lovely. He feels guilty about that, but how could he not notice that he’s lovely? How could he not want to feed him himself? He doesn’t even know his name…

 

    “Come on, angel.” He rises, once his guest has finished, offering his arm. The man gives him an odd look and then a smile, and accepts his help up. “Let me show you around. Er… we’ll go at the pace you like.”

 

    He introduces him to the downstairs, where many objects seem to be unfamiliar to him. Oh, he doesn’t seem surprised that they _exist_ , more as if… as if he knows them from a distant past and can’t quite remember what they’re for.

 

    Anthony’s imagination runs away with him a bit, as his guest sits on every piece of furniture-- in part it may be a concession to whatever pains him when he walks, but he also just seems genuinely delighted, seems to find all the seats to be impossibly comfortable-- particularly delighted when Anthony sits beside him on the loveseat in the private sitting room and puts his own feet up on the ottoman, and his guest joins him in doing so with a sigh, and hugs one of the little round throw pillows in his arms.

 

    Had he been a prisoner somewhere, for many years, far from the comforts of home? Confused by modern updates on old familiar things, unused to any place comfortable to rest? Never spoken to, his voice atrophying? No baths? Well… no, he was clean, and a mere swim surely wouldn’t have made him so if he’d been kept in filth, but still. He might have been kept somewhere, a prisoner on a ship or an island. Kept without clothes? He understands some things and not others in a way which baffles Anthony, but it’s not a lack of intelligence. He’s bright, he’s clever, he’s just… an odd kind of innocent. It makes something in him _ache_.

 

    He likes the piano in the parlor, when Anthony plays a bit to him, and he experimentally tries to repeat it. A bit of playing about the keys and he’s able to play back the little tune Anthony had done, which is extraordinary. Anthony plays another little bit, his guest plays it back perfectly. And then, he plays something…

 

    Something haunting. His lips move, soundless, and when he stops, his cheeks are wet.

 

    “That was beautiful. Did you ever play, before?”

 

    He shakes his head, and lets Anthony wipe his tears.

 

    “Did you… sing?”

 

    He nods.

 

    “But you can’t anymore… Well-- but-- but you’re very good at making music. Even if you’ve got to make it another way for now. You can use the piano whenever you like. I’d like to hear you play again sometime, when you feel like it. That song… did you make it up?”

 

    A shake of the head.

 

    “Oh, and old one.” Anthony smiles. “What is it about?”

 

    He holds up a hand, fingers spread. One by one, he tucks them in, until one remains. Anthony nods.

 

    “I’m lonely as well, sometimes. Oftentimes. Er… well. My family lives far from here. They don’t come often.”

 

    His guest nods, and turns towards the sea-- with no window in this room, he points himself unerringly towards it. Anthony pats his shoulder.

 

    “I see. Shall we go back upstairs? And I’ll show you the rest?”

 

    They head up together, his guest leaning heavily on him.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Aziraphale soaks up everything Anthony tells him, about the things in his home, the pictures that decorate his walls, what he likes most. As they reach the upstairs, he grips Anthony’s arm tighter, and steers him back towards the room he’d been taken to before. He’s not at all sure about what to _do_ , he realizes. His bladder insists he do _something_ , but what do these creatures even do, out of the water?

 

    There is water in the house, but it’s small and enclosed, he wouldn’t be able to easily leave it. What do they _do_ , when they live out here on land where everything is so different? Normally, Aziraphale would politely leave the company of others, move away from where he’d relieved himself, and let the ocean… deal with it, as it deals with everything else. Let the little creatures whose job it is filter and clean as they constantly do, let the movement of the water… Let everything just be _normal_! The way it’s meant to be! He doesn’t want to use the bath, contained, no filters, but where else can he submerge himself in water?

 

    “Oh-- Right, yes.” Anthony coughs, his face going red as they reach the room. He walks Aziraphale not to the bath at all, but to something else entirely, where he helps him gather the hem of his garment up before leaving him.

 

    Well, it’s… self-explanatory, he supposes, but it is highly uncomfortable. He’s just… sitting out in the open, in one place, it doesn’t feel _right_. And everything is _rearranged_! It doesn’t feel at all the same as it used to.

 

    He’s glad to have the whole experience behind him, and dreads facing it the next time.

 

    Anthony flashes him another awkward smile when he rejoins him outside of the room with the bath, and the… the other things. The bench and the mirror and the other thing and the… the one that’s like the bath only small and up high. Is it for infants? That would explain why Anthony hadn’t found the need to tell him about it.

 

    “Er, so… well, you’ve already seen the bath, of course, but-- but these rooms are for you to use while you’re here, so you won’t have to share the bath with anyone else.” He assures him. “And you can sleep here, for as long as you need.”

 

    Aziraphale looks at the surface that dominates the room. He’s taken brief naps on basking rocks, but for real sleep… he’s never slept alone before. Always in the safety of the pod. Well… on the outside, arm linked with a brother-cousin… someone. Part of the outer periphery of the cluster, like the other single young males. He’s always slept _floating_ , for real sleep. He touches the surface of the thing, and his hand sinks down into it. Even softer than anything else he’d sat on.

 

    “Come on, I’ll show you where my rooms are, then you can see the library. And if you’re not too tired, after, we’ll go down to the garden. Or-- or we can do that tomorrow.” Anthony says. Across the corridor there’s another set of rooms like the ones Aziraphale will stay in. The place where Anthony must bathe and sleep. “If you need anything at night, you can just come and knock. All right?”

 

    Aziraphale nods.

 

    “Come on, the library’s down here.

 

    Aziraphale walks with him, stopping in his tracks when Anthony swings the door open, and he sees the _library_. He lets go of Anthony’s arm, stumbling to the rows upon rows of them…

 

    “You like books?” He asks, as Aziraphale pulls one at random, a big one. He carries it to the seat, opening it, running his fingers over the page. It feels different, dry, it has an _aroma_ , strange and sweet, he leans over it and breathes in deep. Anthony chuckles and sits beside him. “You can come and read them whenever you like.”

 

    Aziraphale pauses. _Books. Read_. That’s what they are, that’s what you do with them. He shakes his head, embarrassed. How can he explain that he can’t? There are so many of them right at his fingertips, he’s allowed to peruse them at his leisure and stay in Anthony’s home, but he has no way of deciphering them. There’s no key to show him.

 

    _Stupid_. Why had he thought he could do this? Why had he believed that once he was on land, he would find it so easy? Why had he given up his whole life just for something he can’t do? His breath catches in his chest and feels funny. _Lungs_ , it’s because his lungs are different. No gills along his back to filter out water, where the fat’s the thinnest and there’s enough surface to breathe through, just his mouth and his nose and his stupid human lungs that don’t even know how to breathe and cry at the same time.

 

    “Oh.” Anthony reaches up, drying his face again with a little cloth. “I’m sorry-- No, it’s all right. Do you have trouble with it?”

 

    Aziraphale nods miserably.

 

    “I’m afraid the collected works of Shakespeare is a bit tricky to get through, then. Here-- let me find something.”

 

\---/-/---

 

    Modern poetry, that’s the thing for it. He wonders again at what might have happened to his poor guest. Maybe the story his imagination weaves is farfetched, but nothing else makes more sense than ‘hapless kidnap victim and prisoner’-- after all, if he had been kidnapped as a boy, and kept from his education, he… he might well be excited at a return to the world of books, but unable to read much, or even at all. True, a shipwrecked sailor could be sweet and mute and illiterate, and shaky on land, and uncomfortable with all the comforts of a fine house, but his guest has soft hands.

 

    He brings a slim volume back to the loveseat, and motions for his guest to draw near and look over his shoulder if he likes, to watch him trail a finger along the line. Another time, perhaps, they can worry about actually helping him catch up to where he ought to be with it. For now, though, he can still enjoy the library.

 

    “Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky…” He begins, reading at a slow and measured pace, and his guest leans against his shoulder to listen, and to look at the words. He reads, and is aware of his attentive audience, as they lose themselves together in the rhythm of the words, let it paint pictures.

 

    He is aware, near the end, of the man at his side sucking in a breath and clutching at his arm. No sooner are the words ‘I do not think that they will sing to me’ past his lips but his guest is _weeping_ into his chest, silent, heaving sobs.

 

    He finishes out the last little bit of the poem, and sets the book aside, and wraps his arms around the man.

 

    “Oh, angel… shh, shh…” He soothes, rubbing his back, stroking his hair. Did he hate it or love it? Certainly he’d responded to it with unrestrained emotion. There’s something about that Anthony thinks he envies. He thinks of the days his own emotions are underwater and hard to reach and nothing tastes right, and thinks it would feel that much better to just have one big cry sometimes… “It’s all right, you-- you let it out.”

 

    He holds him until he pulls away, finished, and lets him take the book. Watches him pore over the last bit with furrowed brow. He reads the words again as the man drags his own finger along beneath the words, voice soft, and watches him blink away tears and go over the words again and again. There is a determination in him, a fierce desire that Anthony wonders at.

 

    Where is he from? Why is he the way he is? How do you help a man learn to read, when he obviously wants to, without reducing him to things meant for children?

 

    “I come in here sometimes and sit with the lights low.” He says, when the man closes the book and leans against his shoulder. “But if you ever want them on, just give me a knock to warn me.”

 

    He gets up then, and goes to turn the light down himself, before returning to the loveseat.

 

    “Don’t you want the light?” He asks, and the man shrugs. “Are-- are you used to being in the dark?”

 

    He nods, and Anthony bites his lip, patting his hand. “I’m sorry. You can have the lights up whenever you like, though-- just knock to let me know and you can have them up. It’s just-- I’m just sensitive to light. My eyes.”

 

    He reaches up, fingertips hovering near Anthony’s glasses, expression questioning.

 

    “You won’t like them.”

 

    He shakes his head with a smile.

 

    “Yeah, all right. Dim in here to be wearing them. But it’ll be like I said…”

 

    Some of the people at his parties have seen them. One woman as good as said they were… ‘Not even human’, she had said, though she’d said it with delight, hadn’t meant it to hurt him. It did hurt him!

 

    He likes them, the people he invites. In theory, at least, he likes them. He’d like to be friends with them. But they’re all so bright, they’re all so… something. He forgets how to be confident before them. These iconoclasts and troublemakers and artists and proud queer creatures. They don’t stop to think he might not be proud of every thing which makes him different.

 

    He’s proud of things he does and says and thinks. He’s proud of what he’s made of himself since his parents abandoned him. He’s proud of what he’s learned to do.  He’s proud to craft parties people he like, and to come up with wild ideas that, when whispered in the right ears, lead to fun and amusement with most-- and only occasionally an arrest-- and he’s… mostly he likes himself. Even when he loathes himself, he’s perversely proud of some things.

 

    His eyes haven’t anything to do with him, though. All they’ve ever done is cause him trouble.

 

    But this man… he looks into them a long moment, and then returns the glasses to Anthony’s hand. Touches his cheek.

 

    “Not frightened of me?” He says, and it comes out as a joke, as an honest joke. Clearly he isn’t. There’s a silent laugh, and his cheek is patted. “You sure? I’m a proper bad man, I’ll have you know. I throw… wicked parties. And I drive like a bloody demon. And I… stick my fingers in the cake frosting. Not such a gentleman as you believed now, am I?”

 

    More silent laughter, though not a total sense of understanding in his expression. He plucks at his nightgown and smooths it, then takes Anthony’s arm rather firmly, and rests a hand on the book in his lap, expression serene.

 

    “Well… all right, but don’t you go telling people, I’ve a reputation.” He says, and freezes. How could he have said such an awful thing? _Don’t go telling people_? He really is a monster…

 

    Only… his guest just laughs again and sags against his shoulder with a grin.

 

    “Come on… pick another and we’ll go and read in the garden.” He suggests, rising and helping his guest up. He slips his glasses back on, and feels a blossoming pleasure as one of his own favorite novels is passed into his hand. “Oh, you’ll like this. Er, I hope. We should definitely read it out in the garden.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Aziraphale very much enjoys the tour of the gardens, expansive and beautiful. Anthony shows him the herbs and the vegetables and the flowers, the roses… Leads him into an ivy-covered bower with a stone bench, where the light filters through, cooled by the thick cover of green leaves. Where it is dimmed enough that Anthony can fold his glasses into his shirt pocket and read without them.

 

    He doesn’t understand quite everything in the story, but he thinks he understands it well enough. He understands that a boy has made a bargain he can’t yet understand, and his eyes feel damp again. He never knew that crying was so _wet_ …

 

    “D’you like it, or d’you want to stop?” Anthony whispers.

 

    Aziraphale shakes his head, tapping at the page for him to continue.

 

    “All right. Until the sun starts going down, then we’ll go in and wash up for dinner. The ladies shall have to forgive us your appearance until we can find proper clothes. Might get something taken in to fit you tomorrow… and then we’ll be able to go into the village if you like. You won’t have to hide up in the house all the time once you’ve got something to wear.”

 

    He nods agreeably, and settles in to listen, but Anthony doesn’t return to the book right away.

 

    “When you’ve had the chance to study for yourself…” He says, his attention on some faraway day. “You could write your name out for me. Do you mind me calling you ‘angel’ until then? Only you look like one.”

 

    Whatever an angel is, he makes it sound very nice. Aziraphale nods, and rests his head on Anthony’s shoulder. Should he decide he wishes to pursue a courtship, it really would be… nice. He’s not the sort Aziraphale always used to sigh over… He was never unconventional in his tastes, he favored broad, sleek youths with freckled backs and pale, soft, round stomachs, with strong arms, their hair in long braids… pleasant round faces, good sharp teeth. His head was turned by bright flashes of color like anyone else. He never thought very far ahead in his daydreams of courtship, never thought past the gifts and the dances. He’d never had an interest in producing offspring, it seemed pointless to wonder when no one was courting him anyway.

 

    Anthony would not be a desirable mate, in Aziraphale’s old world… but he is gentle, and kind, and claims to have a spark of mischief in him. His home is large and comfortable, he suggests that food is plentiful and easy to come by. He… he suggests that Aziraphale can learn to read, and to create writing of his own, that it is not hopeless. In this world, at least, it is clear he could do worse. He shall just have to see the way the current moves them, as they get to know one another.

 

    It wouldn’t do to make any rash decisions due to his loneliness, his separation from his old pod. He is best away from them, he knows… he fit less and less there, over time. He would rather be adrift in a new world than adrift in his own, he tells himself so, but it doesn’t make him less lost and lonely. There’s going to be a lot of adjusting, in this new world. He is fortunate to have a friend.

 

    The high, small bath is for washing up for dinner, apparently. After he’s done that, one of the other humans brings him something to put on over his current garment.

 

    “Well, it’s not much for modesty, but it’ll have to do.” Anthony laughs, helping him into it. It’s thick and soft, and warm in the cooler evening. He can’t keep himself running his fingers over the sleeve, wraps the loose front of it around himself a little more tightly and toys with the collar of it.

 

    A handful of humans gather together-- at the _dinner table_ , that’s where they are. Aziraphale had expected that there would be enough food to go around, but he’s astonished at what there is. Some unfamiliar meat, and greens, and other things like foods he’s seen in shipwrecks. He looks at it all wide-eyed, and Anthony serves him small amounts of all of it.

 

    “There’s more for later if you need, but go slow.” He cautions. “You’re recovering from your… er… ordeal, I expect. I don’t want for you to feel ill later…”

 

    Aziraphale nods, watching the others tuck in. He operates the little implements with more confidence, more used to his hands as they are. The meat is tender, isn’t difficult to cut, but he still doesn’t like…

 

    He likes the food, but he doesn’t like his new teeth. They don’t _tear_ the same way. They are not as good for meat.

 

    They are… better, for the rest, he supposes. He likes everything. He likes what Anthony gives him to drink, and how he pays attention to him, and offers him more in small amounts when he’s finished. He doesn’t feed him again, but… he seems to favor him a bit. Has perhaps not completely disregarded the idea that Aziraphale is worth courting. Even without his former sources of beauty. Well… he still has his figure, more or less, and he still has his hair. Why should he have to be perfect? Anthony isn’t perfect, but he has a very nice face and he’s a very nice person. Maybe… maybe it’s just all right, if they get to know each other a bit. Nothing serious, but… a bit of interest is certainly flattering.

 

    And then… oh, when the meal is cleared away, he thinks it the end of it, but then another dish is placed before him. Something very soft and white, and _sweet_.

 

    That, he decides, is his favorite thing of all.

 

\---/-/---

 

    The last thing Anthony Crowley wants is to ever make his guest uncomfortable, to take advantage of his traumatized state, his naivete, his odd mannerisms and ease with touch.

 

    It is very difficult when the cake arrives. The ability to make sound is rendered wholly unnecessary by the look of _rapture_ on his face, the way he is torn between savoring each bite and tearing into it. The _look_ he gives him. It’s not enough to sit beside him, to watch him. He wants to feed him again. Not to spoon feed him because he is still weak after the worst of it, but to tear bites between his fingers and push them past plump, pink lips.

 

    It is… not uncharted territory, exactly. There’s a pretty boy who comes to his parties now and then, who… He’s like the rest of them, sometimes he’s nice and clever and interesting and sometimes he’s awful, but not a special awful. Just the kind of awful everyone rich sometimes gets, because no one raised them any better. But Crowley’s upbringing had always been different, and so he sees his peers as if from the outside, sees his family from the outside. Well… his real family, he thinks, are the people who took care of him, who eat with him at what would otherwise be a very lonely table, and who talk to him like a child more than an employer, but then, that’s what he’d rather.

 

    The point is, the point is there’s a boy, a young man, and he’s pretty, and his mouth is very pretty, and sometimes before the parties get to be too much, too loud, too fast, he watches him pick over the buffet and sip at the champagne, and he feels something… the desire to offer to feed him a bite. And the thing is, he knows if he did, the boy would say yes, and they’d flirt over the hors d'oeuvres a bit, and… well, and then he doesn’t know.

 

He knows he couldn’t keep up with him for long.  He’d quickly find himself outpaced somehow, no longer in any kind of control of the situation. And it’s not that Anthony likes the idea of controlling other people, exactly, he very much does not. But he likes to be in control of situations. It’s comforting just to feel like he’ll come out of a situation okay, which… he always has done, he supposes. But a little control helps. Just knowing what to anticipate and what he’ll do. And he knows that with some of the pretty boys who attend his parties, he’ll wind up in an embarrassing position…

 

It’s not just watching a pretty boy eat, he can’t go sit in a cafe for a giddy little thrill. It’s providing the food. There’s a little buzz of it, at parties, laying out a spread and watching it be appreciated, watching it be appreciated in particular by someone who is unabashed in showing his pleasure, someone with wide eyes and an attractive mouth… but with his guest, his angel, he’d _fed_ him. He _hadn’t_ thought about it like that at the time, he _hadn’t_ thought about the potential for pleasure in it, he’d only thought about how weak the man had been, and how lost, how he’d been through so much and had no way of talking about it, and so… so open to being helped. Whatever might have happened, whoever might have hurt him, so trusting.

 

He hadn’t thought about it until he was doing it, and the feeling he was hit with was so much _more_. He’d pulled back at dinner, but even serving him, seeing him…

 

After dessert, he walks him up to the library, where after a detour to his own vanity, he sits with him a while. Runs a comb through tangled curls, gently unknotting the snarls… While he works, his angel distracts himself looking through a book with beautiful plate illustrations. Every so often, he taps a word, and Anthony reads it out to him. Occasionally, he points out the relevant part of the illustration, mostly he just traces over the things that seem important without context.

 

“There, that probably feels better.” He says, smiling when he gets a nod. “One more chapter of our book before bed?”


	3. Gather it All With a Basket of Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale settles in a little more-- and makes a choice.

    There are things about being human Aziraphale fears he will never get used to. Anthony had found him weeping silently in the room with the bath, where he had left him to get ready for bed in privacy, and he’d been mortified, had hated himself, but he’d been taken care of so gently. His face washed, guided through cleaning his teeth-- strange, but he thinks he does like it, actually-- helped from there to his bed and spoken to in soothing tones.

 

    He wishes he could explain. He wishes he could say it’s not that he’s helpless, it’s that it’s all so new. He had thought he would be as capable in this new world as he had been in his own, he had always done well enough taking care of himself. He had assumed he would find some occupation on land which suited him, and a place where he might sleep, and food, but everything is so confusing that he’s not sure he could leave Anthony’s house and take care of himself. Oh, surely he could find a cave down by the shore where he would be sheltered at night, but… even with sharp teeth, he’d never been a hunter. What sort of foods could he easily scavenge now that he can’t swim rapidly enough to catch prey, nor dive deep enough to snatch up the things which scuttle along the ocean floor? And how would he work his way into society?

 

    But he hadn’t thought of those things, eager as he was for a new world where he might gain new knowledge. Stories he had never heard, an understanding of all the strange things found in wrecks. He knows more of what to do now, and how his body is different, and… and how to use things. What pulling the hanging chain does and what temperature the taps will make the water, and what the different scented things are for. He just wants to be able to say he never had them before and that’s why he was surprised.

 

    Anthony draws back the covers on the bed, and Aziraphale had stripped out of his clothes earlier to get ready, slides in and lets himself be covered up in softness.

 

    “There… poor angel.” Anthony sighs, resting a cool hand on his forehead. “Tomorrow will be better, yeah? Tomorrow’s always better.”

 

    The bed is nice. It’s very soft, as much like floating as he thinks you can be out of the water. At least, as close as he’s been so far. The bath, being water itself, he doesn’t think counts. And the covers are warm, and the pillows cozy, but…

 

    It’s so lonely, not to even have an arm linked through his own. Once Anthony goes, he’s just… there. He doesn’t complain or try to keep him-- it’s obvious that’s not how things are done up here.

 

    He doesn’t sleep easy, but this too, he supposes, he will learn in time. And in the morning, the light comes through the window, and if he looks out, he can see the ocean from above, strange and beautiful from this new position. That used to be his home, and now it is not.

 

    It feels strange to think on it.

 

    He dresses in his clothes again, and ventures out of his room. He doesn’t know where he ought to go, but one of the humans takes his arm and leads him downstairs, and it feels much easier to just go where he’s led.

 

    “Master Crowley won’t rise until late.” She says, and another woman joins them as they enter the dining room, laughing gently at that.

 

    “Yes, Anthony’s always been a late sleeper. But let me see you get your breakfast, dear. Did you sleep well?”

 

    He nods politely, not wanting to complain when it seems he’s been given every available comfort-- and certainly not when breakfast has been promised. He’s pleased to allow himself to be fussed over a bit by Anthony’s pod members, to be properly welcome among them like this. They bring him something hot to drink, which is not like the other liquid food at all-- it’s thinner, it’s not at all meaty, it’s… interesting. When he doesn’t take to the first taste, one of the women drops in a couple of white cubes, stirring until they dissolve, handing it back to him sweeter.

 

    They set what seems a good deal of food out in front of him as well. The little oily fish are familiar, and all the rest is strange. Something which is brown and crunches and something else which is white and smooth, and various other little things, in small amounts that he might try them. He saves the fish for last as he dutifully tries everything else, and Anthony comes in just as he’s getting to them.

 

    “You’re up early!” One of the women exclaims.

 

    “Not early enough, I see.” He sighs, dropping into his chair. “Sorry, angel, I meant to be up to greet you. You rise with the dawn…”

 

    “Not hardly.” She laughs at him. “But your friend rises at a perfectly decent hour. I’ll get your breakfast.”

 

    “No rush. I never digest anything properly before noon.” He pats his stomach, and both the women tut over him-- there’s a litany of what Aziraphale supposes must be familiar complaints about healthy habits and taking care of himself.

 

    “What about you, angel? How does breakfast find you?” Anthony asks him, beaming when he nods eagerly, watching him devour the rest of his fish and lick the oil from his fingers. “Good, good. You like those? Shall we have them every morning, then?”

 

    Every morning? The thought is dizzying-- in many ways, of course, they’re indistinguishable from the sort of small fish which are as plentiful as anything, but the oil is what makes them stand out, and down below, they’re only discovered in wrecks and lost cargo, packed in little tins, are rather prized. He never would have dreamed of having them every morning.

 

    “Of course you can.” Anthony presses, seeing his hesitant delight, his shock. “As often as you like. You just let me know your favorites.”

 

    When his own breakfast arrives and a handful of others sit down with plates of their own to join them, Anthony holds up or points to various things to ask Aziraphale’s opinion, giving him names for all of them. Apparently the white thing is an egg, though it’s enormous and tastes nothing like any of the eggs Aziraphale has ever eaten.

 

    After breakfast, they bring him more clothing, take him to a smaller room to help him try things on. A soft shirt, white with a blue stripe, no collar. The shape of the sleeves is not quite as beautiful, but the bit of color is nice. He can bear the first thing they ask him to pull over his legs, but the trousers… even loose as they are, to feel the places they touch him, he can hardly keep them on. The socks are so unbearable that Anthony, who has knelt to help him into them, stops midway through and removes the wretched thing immediately.

 

    “Does that hurt?” He frowns, gently holding Aziraphale’s heel in his hand. “All right, angel. No socks, no shoes. You can wear your slippers into town. Let me dress and I’ll take you-- would you like to?”

 

\---/-/---

 

    The trip into town means one thing-- it means Anthony can show off his car. The absolute light of his life since he got her, his Bentley. His angel approaches her like he’s never even seen a car before-- had he been on some small island without any? Anthony is used to taking the normally empty stretch of road between his house and the local village-- ‘town’ a rather grand thing to call it-- at as high a speed as he can coax from the Bentley, but today, he goes at a sedater speed.

 

    He parks outside the gentlemen’s clothiers, escorting his angel in. Well… not ‘his angel’, but until he has a name for him, it suits him as well as any other moniker, doesn’t it? His hair, clean and dry, forms a pale blond halo of curls, his cheeks are round and pink as any cherub in a painting, and there is something in his expression sometimes…

 

    “Pick out the things you like, and we’ll find the right size.” He says, patting the man’s arm. “Go ahead and pick out a few, you’ve got to have clothes.”

 

    He picks out a walking stick, handing it to him, and watches him learn to lean on it to make his way around the store, a little freer than being attached to Anthony’s side at every moment. He still hovers close, and there are moments where his angel takes his arm again anyway, and leans on both, but he can move faster when they don’t need to try to match their gaits, and it allows him to make trips to and from the dressing room to try things on.

 

    He gravitates towards color. He picks a dark blue suit jacket and a light blue shirt, and a tartan jumper. He tries on a pair of yellow gloves, and after flexing his hands experimentally, he puts those back. He picks out a vibrant polka-dotted pocket square, and silently asks Anthony’s help in trying out a bow tie. Another shirt in a bold stripe, lavender and blue with a thin line of green. Another in pink. He gives Anthony a questioning look, holding them up.

 

    “Yes, and a couple more.” He encourages, finding the trousers that go with the suit jacket. “You don’t want to run out of things to wear.”

 

    He picks out a sleeveless jumper, argyle, and a tweedy jacket. He finds a waistcoat he likes, and a soft cardigan, and then a big soft bathrobe, checking in each time to be sure he’s doing as he ought. Anthony finds him a hat, beaming at the silent laugh it earns him, when he merely sets it in place on the other man’s head. He also picks him out a scarf, which goes over very well indeed, and a box of pale blue handkerchiefs, and some underthings.

 

    With their parcels in the car and the walking stick in hand, they head down the street, stopping to look in the windows of the ladies’ shop, the florist-- there, he pats Anthony’s arm, gesturing to a floral display, and then to Anthony himself.

 

    “Hm? You like it?”

 

    He shakes his head, then nods with a rather pained expression, and pats Anthony’s hand again.

 

    “Oh-- do I like it? No-- do I-- Oh! Like the garden? Yes.” He laughs, nodding as well. “Yes, I grow some like that, yes.”

 

    He jerks his head towards the window display, just barely, his expression unimpressed, before pressing a hand to Anthony’s again, smile returning.

 

    “You think mine are better?” He straightens up a little. “Thank you, angel. Oh-- here, let’s go in here. Have you had chocolate before?”

 

    He hasn’t, evidently-- he shakes his head, eyes wide, and the moment the scent hits his nostrils, a look of bliss transports him, transforms him. He’s so terribly _beautiful_ in that moment, this shortish, roundish, strange little man, he looks every inch an angel.

 

    There are trays of fancy chocolates out on display, and Anthony buys an assortment of them, the pink box with the gold ribbon, and then buys an extra, one of the marbled seashell-shaped ones that had caught his angel’s eye. The temptation to feed it to him is enormous, and were it not for the watchful eye of the chocolatier, he thinks he might well give in.

 

    “My friend here is recuperating from a shipwreck.” He says, by way of introduction. Though he can’t be sure it’s the truth… Still, he feels he ought to say something, to explain the presence of the man on his arm. “His voice is quite ruined, but he’s with me. Staying up at the Crowley house.”

 

    He hands over the extra chocolate, watching with his own hunger as his angel breathes in the scent of it, and nibbles at it, as he sighs and his pale lashes flutter against round, rosy cheeks.

 

    “A ringing endorsement.” The chocolatier says, amused. “A speedy recovery for your friend, then, and I hope we see you gentlemen soon.”

 

    “Oh, I’m sure you will.” He promises, leading them out. “Here, pop it in your mouth and let it melt.”

 

    The other man does, smiling around the chocolate as they make their way down the street. As they look into other shop windows. They only go up and down the high street a ways, before heading back home, he doesn’t want the walking to exhaust his guest, but a small amount he thinks must be good for him. At least, he seems to want to do a certain amount in spite of his pain. Anthony thinks he can understand that-- if it were him, he wouldn’t want to get weaker, waste away not doing what he could, if he could. And there are rewards to it, getting out of the house, walking about. Maybe the reward is an hour of pleasure out in the garden, or a chocolate purchased in the village, or maybe it’s just a feeling, the kind he sometimes gets…

 

\---/-/---

 

    They go in the car again, after seeing some of the village, after the shops with the clothes and the chocolate-- the chocolate is sweeter than anything Aziraphale has ever had in his old life. Richer than the cake from the night before-- one of Anthony’s pod mates had asked him, after, did he liked the cake, and he’d pressed her hand between his own and nodded.

 

    He had liked it very much, but he likes the chocolate more. He likes it more than anything. It must be the choicest of land foods, Anthony had traded for it, had given the very prettiest to Aziraphale. If this is being courted on land, he likes it.

 

    He is uncertain about the car, which Anthony is so proud of. It feels so strange to be conveyed in it, but it is certainly more comfortable than it would be to try to walk that distance. He’s used to swimming everywhere, would hardly tire at swimming a great distance, but walking… it hurts, and he tires so quickly. But as they drive, Anthony talks to him, and he is free to relax and watch the village disappear, the countryside roll by, the house come into view… and to hear all about how Anthony has taught all the village boys their favorite bits of mischief.

 

    He would be good with caring for the young, Aziraphale thinks. Just going by the way he speaks of the boys… proud and fond the way any good caretaker is, having taught a skill. Mischief might not be considered a skill by all, but Anthony makes it sound like one. Or… like a set of skills. Applied for fun now, but every skill learned for play can be used for life in turn. So far, Aziraphale can’t tell what duty Anthony _has_ … Some of his pod mates seem to do different things, with the food or with moving things about in ways Aziraphale doesn’t quite understand. He says his family lives far away but his pod cares for him… the older ones treat him like he’s still young, but the young ones treat him as if he’s their head. It’s rather hard to figure out how anything works, but he’s determined to find his place with them.

 

    Back at home, Anthony engages one of his pod mates in helping to carry everything in, and to bring it up to Aziraphale’s room, where Anthony helps him put things in their places, in his drawers and his wardrobe-- his wardrobe, with a shelf for the hatbox, and Aziraphale shucks his trousers off immediately once in his room, but soon gets to work joining Anthony in setting everything right.

 

    “Oh--” Anthony turns away. “Erm… did you want to change?”

 

    Aziraphale nods, uncertain, though Anthony isn’t looking at him now-- while Aziraphale slides neatly-folded shirts and undershorts into his dresser drawers, Anthony slips other things onto hangers. _Change_ … he doesn’t know how to begin explaining to Anthony what ‘change’ means to him…

 

    He wraps himself in the robe, plush and soft and richly colored, and Anthony relaxes, looking back over at him.

 

    “All right.” He nods. For a moment, he looks at Aziraphale’s shirt collar, his brow furrowed. Then he seems to dismiss his thought.

 

    They read another couple chapters, down in the comfort of the sitting room, and then Aziraphale plays Anthony something more cheerful than he had the first time. It makes him miss singing dreadfully, to create the familiar tune and be unable to give voice to it. The words ring in his head and he can’t tell Anthony what the song is about-- there’s no easy way he can think of to explain the thrill of speeding along, of launching yourself above the water for just a moment, of the open sea all about you and no pressing duties to attend, of the sky above, of racing alongside pod mates, dolphins, and the birds above the waves… How can he explain? How can he explain who he is-- was?

 

    Another meal is served, lighter than the morning and evening meals seem to be-- another opportunity to experience the enormous variety in tastes and textures. Another chance to feel what it’s like to be… _sought after_ , a little bit. To have Anthony serve him from the big dish at the center of the table, and watch him carefully to see if he likes everything, to be doted upon… It’s an exhilarating feeling, to be focused on so.

 

    It’s a bit soon, he thinks, to encourage too much, when his life is so unsettled… and yet he finds himself wishing Anthony might feed him again.

 

    After, he returns to the library, this time with one of Anthony’s pod mates. She calls him ‘poor lamb’ and helps him with deciphering the symbols that make up the books. He is tireless at this task, going over and over the symbols as he learns them. The sounds each stands for, the simple words and phrases they create. She guides him, explains the odd nonsensical rule, but he takes to it pretty well. He’d learned the shapes of some of the words, reading with Anthony, but not how to decipher them for himself. He thinks he would spend all night at his task without thought of food or sleep, if it weren’t for her stopping to suggest he go and fetch Anthony from the garden, to wash up for dinner.

 

    Perhaps after dinner, he might try to further his progress… Still, he can hardly refuse his new teacher anything. He goes out into the garden, and he doesn’t find Anthony out among the flowers, or in the shady bower where they’d read the other day. He finds him in a back corner he hadn’t had shown off to him before, on his knees tending to his plants, a basket beside him that he fills with bright-colored things to eat, some now-familiar to him…

 

    So this is his job among his pod, helping to grow their food? It’s new to Aziraphale, whose old pod hunted and gathered, as had all the others he’d known. It’s interesting, but it’s not nearly as interesting to him as Anthony’s _clothing_. He’s wearing soft trousers, deep green, and a shirt striped in bright colors, sleeves rolled up to bare his forearms, no collar, his elegant neck on display.

 

    Why had he not dressed so beautifully to go to town? His clothes had been much plainer then, mostly black. Why change into colors to work-- unless… had he not wanted to catch people’s eyes in town? Had he wanted only to impress Aziraphale, during a time they might be more alone? Aziraphale comes around to the side, kneeling down in the grass beside him, and Anthony turns, smiling brightly.

 

    “They send you to come collect me?” He asks, brushing some of the earth from his hands. “All right. Er-- oh, I’d offer you a hand back up… D’you mind me being dirty?”

 

    Aziraphale shakes his head, touching Anthony’s sleeve with a soft smile.

 

    “Oh-- yeah, why don’t you just grab my arm and help yourself up.” He nods. “We’ll have some more harvests on these before the seasons change… What do you think?”

 

    Between the walking stick and Anthony’s arm, Aziraphale rises without any trouble. His legs often ache and feel uncomfortable, but they’re strong enough… he’s learning how to work with them, and how much they can do before needing a rest-- and after resting, it feels good to use them again, if only a bit.

 

    Anthony stands, and offers him the basket. “Here, you see that little tomato? Take a bite of that, let me know what you think of it.”

 

    Aziraphale picks it up. Tomato-- he’d had tomato. That’s what he’d had a slice of with breakfast, the red thing. And now, Anthony is offering him one in particular, and he feels a giddy little thrill. He takes a bite, practically half of it at once. It’s juicy, sweet and not-sweet-- sweet compared to other sweetish things he used to know, but not to the beautiful thing he’d once eaten from a wreck, not next to the soft white cake or the chocolate. He likes it, though, and the juice that runs down his chin, and the way Anthony smiles at him, soft and expectant.

 

    “You like it?”

 

    Aziraphale nods. Heart pounding a little harder, he holds the other half out to Anthony. It’s… too much, too much. If he offers this, if he feeds him in return, it’s much more than accepting… It’s not a formal commitment, no, but it’s something, if he does this. And Anthony will have to lean forward, to take it from his fingers, his hands are dirty, he can’t just reach out…

 

    Their eyes meet, and Anthony ducks his head-- does lean in, does take the other half from him, and Aziraphale wipes the juice from his chin on the back of his hand, and then reaches out to wipe a little drop from the corner of Anthony’s mouth with his thumb.

 

    “Mm-- yeah, it is good.” He nods, grinning. “Well, soon we’ll do something with the rest of them, then. For now I guess we’d better go in.”

 

\---/-/---

 

    Normally, Anthony changes for dinner, when he’s been working in the garden, even when he isn’t dirty. It’s not that he needs to, he doesn’t think… no one would make him, not now that he’s grown, that his parents live in the city, he doesn’t need to. He’d just had it drilled into him since he was young. But… his guest, his angel, he doesn’t dress for dinner… and on the whole walk to the house, he had kept touching his sleeve-- not taking his arm, but touching his sleeve. Smiling. Admiring him?

 

    Why he should admire him in his ratty old gardening clothes, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He should… he doesn’t know what he should do. He shouldn’t encourage the man to be more dependent on him. He likes him, though, he likes the way he feels when he’s smiled at, when he’s leaned on…

 

    He washes up, and while he does need to change back into his other trousers, the shirt is clean enough.

 

    His angel, after all, comes down to dinner in his shirt and shorts and bathrobe. The shirt might get an odd look here and there, but not from his angel, who takes the seat at his side, and glances to him with that smile…

 

    He can’t take advantage of him, he _can’t_ , but would it hurt to just be smiled at a little?

 

    “How was your afternoon? Good?” He asks, serving him to a bit of everything.

 

    He gets a fervent nod, a smile like the sun. He mimes opening a book.

 

    “Oh, yes. We did work at reading. He’s a clever one, your guest.” Nanny says-- she’s been head maid since he was old enough not to need nannying, and yet he can hardly imagine calling her anything else. “I can’t imagine how he’s never learned before, it’s certainly not aptitude’s kept him from it.”

 

    “No, course it’s not.” Anthony gives him a soft look. “Knew it wouldn’t be. That’s-- that’s good, then. You won’t need me to read to you. Not that I won’t! If you like. But you won’t need me.”

 

    A gentle hand touches his arm.

 

    “Yeah. Of course I still will.” He nods, watches the slight crinkle at the corners of the other man’s eyes when he catches his meaning. “How about a picnic tomorrow? We’ll take tomato sandwiches and go… go find a nice spot to spread a blanket out. Enjoy some sunshine. Would you like to?”

 

    The answer he gets is tentative, but a yes just the same.


	4. And Gather It All In A Bunch of Heather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A picnic, a present, and a few poor days before the coming of a summer storm.

    Aziraphale doesn’t really know what a picnic is, when Anthony invites him, but he likes the thought of going somewhere with him. Unchaperoned… Of course, they have been unchaperoned before, they’ve largely been unchaperoned, but there is a _difference_ , between being unchaperoned around the home just because of the movements of the rest of the pod, and _going_ someplace to be unchaperoned on purpose. Anthony had spoken of laying out a blanket, of sunshine, of sharing food… a very different affair from going into town and being surrounded by people.

 

    Although, as with going into town, he is expected to wear trousers… He still detests them, but the new ones, the dark blue… they at least look nicer. He wears them with the pink shirt, with the waistcoat he’d picked out. Anthony escorts him out to the car, wearing a brightly striped jacket. It’s very attractive, seeing him in even bolder color… and again, for him alone! Anthony had dressed this way to take him away from the rest of the pod, away from everyone. To be looked at by him. Is every first courtship so heady as this feeling?

 

    “Everything’s all set.” Anthony promises, opening his door for him. “There you go, angel. All right?”

 

    And on the back seat, there’s a great big hamper, and a soft blanket, the one he’d been wrapped in when Anthony first brought him home, the color of wet sand with lines of cream and dark brown and red going this way and that way, which Aziraphale thinks terribly beautiful despite the lack of strong color. The thin lines of red are some, of course, but it’s the shape of it-- there aren’t many straight lines, in the world Aziraphale used to inhabit. It makes a grid of them something rather exotic.

 

    They drive a while, away from town, until Anthony pulls over in the middle of nowhere. He spreads the blanket out beneath a tree, where the grass is a bit less tall than in some places, and he escorts Aziraphale to sit there in the dappled shade. From this spot, they have a lovely view of a creek, where unfamiliar water birds live. Soft-looking little things, tawny brown, some with shining green heads.

 

    Anthony brings the hamper over as well, and gives Aziraphale one of the tomato sandwiches. The birds eye them with some interest, and Anthony pretends to throw a crust their way, sniggering when they all turn to the spot it might have landed, squabbling and making their little sounds over the lack of bread. He shrinks under Aziraphale’s reproachful look, and he tosses them the crust from his sandwich, as well as a handful of little round things, quickly snatched up and swallowed down.

 

    “Fond of ducks, are you?” He asks.

 

    Ducks… Aziraphale nods.

 

    “Here.” He drops a couple of the round things into Aziraphale’s palm, and holds another on his own, before stretching out on his stomach and reaching his hand out, holding very, very still until the boldest duck hurries to snatch the treat away. Anthony laughs, sitting back up as the duck retreats. “Go on, they like blueberries even more than they like bread-- and there’s not much they like more than they like bread. If you hold still and keep patient, you might get one. Their bills are soft, it won’t hurt to let him peck at you. And here-- one for you.”

 

    Anthony brings one of the blueberries to Aziraphale’s lips next, and this time he finds himself accepting it eagerly. The courtship he’d felt somewhat lukewarm about at first, when he’d had other concerns, now excites him-- not because he’s the recipient of attention at all, which had been the draw then, but because…

 

    Because it is Anthony, that frail boy from the shipwreck when they were hardly more than children, who is now so much stronger than he looks, who is now so… so eager to court him, to share his library. To show off for him alone.

 

    He settles down and stretches out his own hand, and waits until the same little duck braves coming close to the blanket to eat the berries from his hand, and he laughs silently as it nibbles from his palm, the bill as soft and painless as promised.

 

    The ducks appeased after Anthony’s teasing, the two of them go back to their picnic, eating the sandwiches and fruit and cheese that Anthony had packed for them, and drinking something pale and bubbly from slender little glasses. While Aziraphale nibbles at the fruit and cheese, Anthony reads to him, and when he sets the book aside, he brings out the box of chocolates.

 

    “Here, would you like one?” He offers, undoing the ribbon and drawing off the lid. Aziraphale nods, and Anthony beams at him. “Go on, angel, pick one.”

 

    Oh… well. He hesitates, and takes one, round and dark. It’s coated with powdery, bitter brown, but then the chocolate itself is even deeper and more complex than the first he’d had, and _rich_. He had rather thought Anthony would want to feed it to him, but it is a rapturous experience either way.

 

\---/-/---

 

    It’s a beautiful day for picnicking, with the shade tree, and a scattering of wildflowers around them, and the burbling brook, and even the ducks, which his angel seems utterly delighted by. Anthony finds he has to turn his attention to the book, lest he stare openly at the poor man with every bite he takes, but he allows himself… he allows himself to watch him enjoy his first sips of champagne, the little smile as the bubbles tickle his nose, cautious little tastes as he grows accustomed. And he allows himself-- he could hardly stop himself-- to watch him enjoy his truffle. The bliss that takes him… the look on his face…

 

    They finish the book, after that, and then he packs up the Bentley. At home, he walks his angel up to his room, where the man thinks nothing of stripping out of his trousers the moment he’s in his room, doesn’t bother with closing the door. Anthony closes it for him, against the temptation to put himself on the other side of it, and goes to his own room to change to tend the garden. Some proper industry, that’s what he needs. But when his guest comes again to collect him, he’s once more elected not to wear any trousers at all beneath his robe.

 

    “Angel…” Anthony straightens up, frowning. “The trousers before-- do they hurt you?”

 

    He watches the flickering of a series of emotions cross his face, and the way he hesitates before shaking his head.

 

    “It’s terribly uncomfortable for you, though.”

 

    He nods.

 

    “All right. I’ll… I’ll find something else. You’ll have to wear them to go into town, but not here, and not to go down to the beach or to go on picnics anymore, all right? When we go on picnics, you can be comfortable, I’ll-- I’ll find something else for you.”

 

    He smiles so warmly, and touches Anthony’s arm in that way of his, that seems to communicate so much. Appreciation, thanks. He tells himself it’s wishful thinking if he sees anything else there-- gratitude is to be expected. He can’t fall into the trap of thinking there’s more, not with a man who can’t clarify exactly. Who might feel beholden to him.

 

    He tries to tell himself the man is a stranger still-- he doesn’t even know his name! He knows nothing about him!

 

    Only… he knows that he is determinedly cheerful, and yet he is unashamed of his other emotions. He weeps when he feels he must weep, he rolls his eyes now and then at things, with the most delightfully sardonic little twist to his mouth. He takes pleasure in things! He’s so alive, in such a different way from the parties… he’s so open. It makes Anthony feel he can live without shame, too. Perhaps not so without shame as to strip off in front of a man he barely knows, but… well, what does he have to hide, when he’d been naked when he was rescued? It’s fair, isn’t it?

 

    He seems kind, and he seems adrift, but he doesn’t seem at all simple. He seems… like whatever his past holds, it must be complicated, perhaps difficult to even fathom, and yet he seems to divorce himself from it and to look forward instead.

 

    It’s a lot to read in, to a man who can’t correct him when he’s wrong, but he feels as if he knows him, or as if he was meant to know him. And he feels as if he can _be_ known.

 

    In the morning, while his angel is hard at work studying, Anthony goes into town. This time, he goes into the women’s clothiers. His nerves very nearly overtake him, but he’s got a quest.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Anthony comes into the library, where Aziraphale has been left to continue his studies alone to allow Anthony’s pod mates to attend to other duties, though he’d had great help earlier. Anthony is bearing an armload of packages, and seems excited to present them.

 

    Aziraphale’s heart flutters just a bit, though he tells himself if it is more clothes, it’s only that he must wear them. It isn’t courting gifts.

 

    “I don’t suppose it’s a perfect solution, but I thought skirts might… you know. For at home, at least, you could be comfortable.”

 

    He opens the first box he’s given, drawing out a straight brown garment, patterned a bit like the blanket he’d first been wrapped in, earthy tones. He pictures it with his pink shirt, or the pale blue one.

 

    There’s a shorter skirt, with sharp pleats, in a deep blue, the same color as one of his jackets, and a longer one in a dark grey. Another that would reach just past his knees, soft fabric in a deep jewel green, with intersecting lines of red and yellow and black, which he likes very much. So much that he can only hold it to his chest a long moment, hardly able to manage himself. That Anthony went back into town to find him more suitable garments, and brought home a variety options, that he might decide how he wished to look, from the plain grey, the somewhat showier navy, the patterned brown, and the terribly lovely green one. He slips out of the robe he’d worn to cover his legs, and slips into the green patterned skirt immediately, smoothing it over his lap as he re-settles.

 

    “You do like it?” Anthony grins, leaning forward. “I… I took the liberty-- I didn’t know if you’d like actual dresses, but…”

 

    He hands over another stack of boxes. One dress is long, with buttons, medium blue, straight and plain and modest, but that does seem to be rather standard for Anthony’s pod. The next is navy and white, reminiscent of sailors’ uniforms, though the arms are bared. And then…

 

    He lifts the final dress from its box, gasping. The fabric is soft, almost sheer, white, but printed with so many big yellow flowers that it’s more colorful than not. The hem rises and falls, and there are wisps of fabric at the shoulders, instead of sleeves. The shape of it! The color! How light it is, as if it would float around him…

 

    “Not too much?”

 

    Aziraphale rises, setting the dress down reverently. He moves to bend down and press his forehead to Anthony’s-- yes, it may be a practical item, not a courtship gift, but it’s so _lovely_. He can just imagine himself in it, can imagine feeling beautiful as he once was, or nearly. As much as he can be without scales and fins, he would be in that dress. Perhaps it’s a bit forward of him, but it was such a thoughtful thing, to bring him something pretty also.

 

    “You’re welcome.” Anthony whispers, one hand resting at Aziraphale’s side. “I’m glad you like it. I… I’ll order you another one, for parties, if you like. Oh, don’t worry about that, at my parties you won’t be the only one! No one who comes _here_ will have any issue with your being in a dress and not trousers. I’ll order something special, and once it’s ready, then I’ll throw you a party. And… and we’ll-- we’ll be happy, won’t we? We’ll be happy, having the champagne and the dancing, and guests having a good time.”

 

    Aziraphale pulls back from the forehead press, nodding eagerly. He’s not sure how to dance on land, but the thought of Anthony asking him is nice. Moving things forward… The more time he spends with him, the more eager he is at the idea of their courtship progressing. They can’t properly twine together, can’t move up and down, nor fluidly change the way they’re oriented in space, but whatever dancing is like on land, he’ll learn. He just hopes when the time comes, his legs will cooperate...

 

    Anthony stands as well, and this time he’s the one to initiate the forehead press, to gingerly wrap his arms around Aziraphale.

 

    “I can feel it coming.” He whispers. “It’s… it’s not fair, either, because it’s been so lovely. You, and-- going on that picnic, and… and you, with your-- It’s… I just need a party.”

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t understand exactly-- or, he understands there’s something in the weariness that takes Anthony’s voice. That he sounds rather unconvinced and yet desperate…

 

    “Look, angel, I-- I’m sorry. I’m really glad you like everything. And when I’m a bit better, we’ll go on another picnic, and… and you’ll have another dress for parties, and we will have a party, and-- and everything. Everything’s going to be good again, I’ll be good again. I’m just… probably going to stay in bed tomorrow.”

 

    Aziraphale pulls back, trying to pour his concern into his expression.

 

    “No, it’s… it’s all right. Nothing catching. Just… I get-- tired, sometimes.” He promises.

 

    Aziraphale nods, and strokes his cheek.

 

    “I’ll let you get back to your reading.” Anthony says, stepping away, and his smile is warm, but it’s sad.

 

\---/-/---

 

    He was _happy_ , that’s the worst part. His fits of melancholy come and go, they always have, but this time he was honestly happy. He doesn’t mind so much when he hasn’t been-- when he’s been bored or listless anyway, when he’s been lonely, then it doesn’t seem to matter.

 

    But now… He found his purpose in life, the thing he was spared for, he should get to be happy! He should get to enjoy watching his angel blossom and heal from whatever troubles must have once beset him, to enjoy giving him things… to enjoy his company.

 

    He just wants to enjoy this new… thing. This friendship, this experience, this… knowing another person, someone who doesn’t treat him like an employer or a child, who doesn’t tire of him after an evening’s revelry and wander off in search of the next amusement, someone who doesn’t…

 

    Doesn’t find him off-putting.

 

    Oh, he knows that they don’t all find him off-putting. The members of the family’s staff who’d really raised him alongside his nanny, they all care for him. If they think he’s strange, it doesn’t change the fact they love him. Shopkeeps and restaurateurs and tradesmen in the village who see him on an errand now and then, who’ve never seen enough of him to be put-off, they think he’s charming enough. But every now and then there’s a short-lived maid or kitchen boy who catches him sitting up late, eyes yellow in the dim light, expression a faraway blank, and they don’t stay in service much longer. Every now and then there’s a party guest who gets into just a little too much of a conversation, and suddenly he finds himself greeted by awkward laughter and darting looks. Every so often there’s a local mother who draws her child away just a little too sharply, and tells him at his age he ought to be ashamed to be such a bad influence.

 

    Which is ridiculous, anyhow. Boys get into trouble, always have and always will-- girls, too, for that matter-- and he’s well aware they could do worse without his guidance than they do with it. Creative little beasts, children. And it’s an idle imagination, not idle hands, that’s the real danger. You might as well fill them up with mischief that won’t end in an accidental maiming, even if there’s a bit of mess or a fright or the odd spot of mild property damage.

 

    Anyway, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s just… he’d felt like he was finally making a friend who wouldn’t treat him like a freak, and now the old melancholy’s spoiled it. Just like it always has, the times his eyes didn’t do the trick. His eyes or his lisp or his caginess. He’s not cagey with the people who come to his parties, not about the things he has to be careful of in town and around his family, he doesn’t have to be, but paranoia is a hard habit to break once it’s been justified once.

 

    He wishes he could sit down with his angel and say everything. There’s a little voice in the back of his head that points out it would be safe to. He could tell him about being attracted to men and about having unnatural desires beyond just that, and about seeing angels-- well, one angel, a real one-- and about every awful thing he’s ever kept secret, and _he wouldn’t be able to tell anybody_.

 

    How monstrously cruel that would be, to use him that way. And to frighten him, even! To sound like a madman, or to suggest even accidentally that he’s intended to buy his affections… to take the open trust which was given him and twist it like that, pushing his secrets on a man who never asked for them. He’s terribly wicked for having thought it.

 

    He’s _irredeemable_ , to have had the thoughts he’s had about someone in need of his hospitality, someone he was meant to rescue, to make safe.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Aziraphale dresses the next morning in the navy skirt, the pale blue top. It’s seeming to be a warm day ahead, but he wears the navy jacket just the same. It just seems to be more proper that way.

 

    Throughout breakfast, he keeps looking to Anthony’s empty chair, with increasing agitation, until the woman Anthony has called Nanny places a gentle hand on his arm.

 

    “If he’s having one of his spells, love, I’ll take him up his luncheon, but he won’t eat before then… Oh, don’t you fret, he’ll be right once it rains. He always is.”

 

    Aziraphale nods, but he doesn’t feel at all better. For an entire day, Anthony doesn’t emerge from his rooms, and his pod mates take him up his supper also.

 

    The next day as well, he’s still hiding himself away. Aziraphale changes into his yellow dress, that afternoon-- it is the prettiest thing he has-- and he goes down into the garden and gathers a few flowers.

 

    He knocks at Anthony’s door, holding them carefully.

 

    “I’m not hungry!” Anthony calls, and unable to say that he hasn’t brought him food, Aziraphale can only knock again. “I said I don’t want any!” And again… “What, then?”

 

    He hesitates, but there’s nothing else he _can_ do, is there? He knocks once more, softly.

 

    “It’s open, then!” Anthony says, and he sounds snappish, but then… could he be blamed?

 

    Aziraphale pushes the door open, slow, and steps into the dark room. Light comes in through a gap in the curtains, but that’s all. He doesn’t mind it, though-- it feels safe, familiar. Dive deep enough, swim into protective caverns, and there’s less light than this. No truly safe place in his old world had been bathed in light.

 

    “Oh, angel… I’m a beast, I’m sorry. Of course-- of course.” He pushes himself to sit, hangs his head. He only looks up when Aziraphale comes to his bedside to present him with the flowers. “For me?”

 

    He gestures to the window-- it must face the garden, for Aziraphale’s faces the ocean-- and then to Anthony himself. If he feels too ill to be out amongst his flowers, well...

 

    “So I would feel better?”

 

    Aziraphale nods, and feels a bit better at the smile that creeps across Anthony’s face at that, and the fact he puts the flowers in his water glass to keep.

 

    “Thank you. I’m not very good company right now.” Anthony says, flopping back down onto his pillows.

 

    He shrugs, glancing towards the door.

 

    “You don’t have to. Erm… but you may as well, I haven’t got it in me to converse much. But I’m glad you came, really. And, ah… you look lovel--you look very nice. It suits you.”

 

    Aziraphale plucks at the fabric of his dress, giving the skirt of it a bit of a swish, beaming at the compliment. How terribly shy he still is… but even so.

 

    “I… If I don’t come down for dinner, I-- sometime tomorrow, I’ll… I’ll see you. Yeah?”

 

    Aziraphale nods, and gives him a little wave, before ducking back out. He returns to the library, and to practicing copying out words. The sky has gone the way it always does the day before rough weather. A part of him still itches to scavenge, when he sees those signs. That life is behind him, but how could he deny that part of who he’s been? How could he pretend he didn’t love finding treasure among the wreckage?

 

    To surface during storms had always been forbidden, too dangerous. The wrecks ought to have been evidence enough of that-- Aziraphale has only seen a storm from above the waves…

 

    He’d seen it when he rescued Anthony.

 

    His experience made it clear enough to him why it was a rule, to stay under, in protected places, until the storm passed. But Anthony’s home is as protected as any place could ever be, and yet allows the world to be watched.

 

    He hopes it’s true, that the rain will cure him somehow. He would see him smile more easily.

 

\---/-/---

 

    On the third day of his melancholy, Anthony does drag himself down to dinner, though not before it’s half over, and even then he eats a little and then excuses him again. Still… it’s… better.

 

    Everyone is pleased to see him emerge from his cocoon of misery, Nanny fusses over him and the others smile in that encouraging way he imagines they think subtle, as they all try not to make too much of a big deal over his return to the world of the living. He can only take so much just yet, but it’s nice to be reminded that they do care for him. And his angel, who brightens when he enters the room…

 

    There’s a storm coming. There’s a relief that comes with them-- he’s been attuned to the change in the air ever since that day… A storm washes away all the tension and upset that builds up. He goes to the library to wait for it-- the library has a window out onto the sea. He doesn’t turn the lights on, just goes and curls up in the window seat to wait. It grows dark early, and from downstairs he can make out the sound of the piano, only faintly, as he watches the night grow blacker.

 

    Finally, _finally_ , the clouds burst over the sea. The rain comes in driving torrents against the window, lightning pierces the sky, thunder rumbles. After three long days, Anthony feels _clean_.

 

    His angel steals into the library, he’s no idea the lateness of the hour, but late. He doesn’t turn the lights on, only comes silently to sit on the floor beside the window seat, his eyes wide.

 

    “Did the thunder wake you?” He asks, brushing the bed-tousled curls back from the man’s forehead.

 

    He shakes his head, though he still seems uncertain-- he clings to Anthony’s knee a bit.

 

    “Does it frighten you?”

 

    He shakes his head again, and this time he gestures-- to Anthony, to the room, to indicate shelter overhead-- _Not frightened, in your house_. Anthony smiles.

 

    “I like storms, myself.” He says. “Everyone thinks it’s odd I should, I almost died in one. Boat smashed to pieces-- I was young and I knew the weather was supposed to turn, and I thought I could handle anything nature threw at me… and I’d have died if I hadn’t had an angel looking out for me.”

 

    There. That’s… vague enough. People say that sort of thing even when they haven’t had an experience with the strange and supernatural, it’s a… a saying. He won’t find that strange and mad.

 

    Indeed, he places his hand back on Anthony’s knee and gives an emphatic squeeze, smiles up at him with those wide eyes, behind which lay fathomless depths… and he nods encouragingly, and…

 

    “I mean really.” Anthony presses, cautious still, but not quite afraid. “I mean-- I mean a real… real live angel put me back on dry land. And-- and ever since then I’ve asked myself over and over again… what’s it for? And then you washed up on my beach, and I knew. It was… it was all so that I could save you, like I was saved. Or-- well not quite like, but-- So I could take you in someday. I mean… well. Do you think?”

 

    He shrugs, but his smile glows.

 

    “You don’t think I’m mad?”

 

    He shakes his head, and rests his chin upon Anthony’s knee, hand slipping down to curl around a calf.

 

    “I should have known you wouldn’t…” He whispers, pushing his hair back again. “You’re such a-- That is, you-- I should have known. You understand me.”

 

    His angel gives him a squeeze, something in his smile shifting. A slight nod, even without lifting his head.

 

    “Yes.” Anthony chuckles. “And I understand you. Pretty well? Yeah.”


End file.
